ive raided in WoW (had full item level 264 gear BEFORE the actual lich king wing in ICC was released)

and i completed all hardmode flashpoints as a MT and had full champion gear BEFORE 1.1 launched in SWTOR - yeah back when it was hard as hell because you could go through 25 champ bags without any gear.

so im a PVE AND PVP elite. and this isnt even counting all the other mmos ive played.

but i aggressively defend GW2.

why? because ive seen the extremes of both sides of the spectrum. and i see that GW2 does what it does, the best. i dont think this game is perfect - hell ive crashed so many times its not really funny - hell, i got a 72 hour ban within 24 hours of buying the game two months after launch, over soemthing stupid.

but ive accepted this game for what it is.

and thats the main issue with folks like Duskwolf and threads like these. you guys are so caught up with how this game is nothing like GW1, and how this is too much like WoW, and how this and that and the third, when all the information was there. ANet made several official statements regarding what GW2 was going to be like and what to expect from this game.

this is an acceptance issue. something that many of you cant seem to do.

i played BWE2 - hated GW2 because i thought i had it in my head what this game was SUPPOSED to be, i went to Gamestop and CANCELED my Collector's Edition pre order. played the secret world and Rift. decided, GW2 is what my wife and i needed with our work schedules and what we wanted out of content and community, so after ENORMOUS amounts of research and watching gameplay vids and reviews, i purchased the game a full 2 months after launch.

and i couldnt be more happy. because i did my research, i knew what to expect and im not putting unrealistic expectations on this game or its developers.

And that one part there , the part where you say how they said how this would be.

That is the point for me.

It should be a game where there is horizontal progression , where there is NEVER need to grind for max stats gear and so many other things.

Do you remember those promises? Cause they were all said by the devs.

But hey , money moves mountains and now the game is becoming like this.

So like i said on many other posts. The fact is , Anet already changed this game from what they said it would be.

It's free sodas and free bathrooms. Everything is free. It's in fact the other way around. Everything you do in WoW costs you. Here it's free. They are not coercing anyone to do anything. It's only a perceived coercing for spoiled people.

Oh, sure, it's free, but there's a line. Paying money gets you bumped ahead. It saves you time. Considering the concept that people might have better things to do with their time than to go through an artificial grind to overcome progression gating, it's not spoiled to want to bypass that.

As players stand there with their freshly forged Ascended gear, they ask, "So what do we now?"

GW2: It's free to get in. Purchase price of the game is not an entrance fee. It's more like tax from government or something ($60). So, you're free to enter and stand in line ($1000 worth). You can pay for faster way to the rollercoaster, yes. However, the line isn't that long. But for those who want instant gratification, they can use the instant gratification line.

WoW: You pay to get in every month ($16.50 a month, $1000 over 5 years). Then you still have to wait in line (level grind, gear grind). You get a bigger rollercoaster though.

You're missing a crucial part of the equation there, sonny boy. In WoW, there is no one saying 'Not enough people are buying fastpass. Start letting only three people on at a time.' ArenaNet manipulates the game economy to drive people towards the shop. Sure, they can't make them drink. But they'll keep adding salt to the meals they serve.

The grind in WoW is only to ensure that people's experiences are drawn out to the next patch release.

The issue is how the cash shop is implemented. With the option to buy in-game wealth, and that clearly being leveraged as a steady stream of revenue, every move that ArenaNet makes is now suspect with a for-profit motive as opposed to the health of the game. The GW1 cash shop had no such direct translation of wealth. You could buy shortcuts, but then nothing like getting yourself infused. Nor did the staff for the original game include any lofty positions like a monetization producer or an economist to monitor the in-game economy. Clearly they have a much more aggressive interest in how the cash shop is leveraged (despite the trickle of content on it) and managing the in-game economy to control player wealth. Ultimatley, I think the ability to change gems into gold is going to lessen the game. It'll be the well ArenaNet needs to constantly revisit to appear profitable and the game will suffer.

Yes. And like I said, I think the No. 1 issue with this business model is that if affects how we play. If I'm paying $15 a month for access to the game, my $15 dollars gets me no more or no less than any other player. At no time during a P2P session are you concerned about how your in-game decisions might trickle over into your real world wallet. It is too bad Anet could not have come up with a less invasive means to drive revenue. And yes, if not for the gems into gold option, the cash shop would be a non issue and Anet would not have even bothered with all the gold sinks in the game.

Obviously, as soon as it was decided that the primary in-game currency could be purchased with real world funds, they had to build in game mechanics that would lure/temp players to "artificially" inflate their wealth. "We don't want players to grind". Right. So we allow them to buy their way out of doing so. Far from an eloquent and creative solution.

Because the way ArenaNet handles money in this game is broken. They're stingy and only allow the tiniest trickle of money into the game, and they tax what little mone you get. The game has been forced into a deflationary spiral, devaluing everything except prices which ArenaNet controls. This is to drive people to the gem store to buy gems to convert to gold.

A surprising (even to me) number of my friends have moved on from GW2, even one really hardcore friend from tumblr whom I was sure would be with it for years. And aside from the vertical progression bait & switch, the reason I hear the most is that they're sick and tired of being broke and they strongly dislike the cynical feeling of the game - where it almost feels necessary sometimes to buy gems if you just want to bounce around everywhere with the waypoints.

I've been playing a lot of other games lately, and they've all shown how unfun GW2 is in its current state. Mass Effect 3, Champions Online, and even Free Realms have a far less cynical approach to online gaming. GW2 is a casino dressed up as a game, the people who play it are gambling addicts.

GW2 is just not a fun game. More and more people are realising it. Sounds like it's begun to sink in for you, too. OP. Move on, don't draw it out.

Okay, so we've already talked a lot about the moving goalposts of introducing vertical progression to itemisation, adding profoundly obvious grind, and creating a divide between types of players. We've aired a lot of thoughts as to whether that was a good or bad thing. However, there was one thing that was subtly slipped into the AMA that I don't think we've talked about. In some regards, it's the elephant in the room.

The eventual and inevitable increase of the level cap to 90 and beyond.

Mike O'Brien said:

[...] and we've always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.

Considering that vertical progression through itemisation is in, it's likely that the level cap will be raised with each expansion. This means that you're never going to be able to reach a power plateau to enjoy the game at, and that content will never be balanced around max stats (focusing on skill instead). However, those who like watching numbers go up will likely continue to get to watch numbers go up. And those who like having number-related goals will have that.

So how do you feel about this? And when both vertical progression via items and levels is in, what will GW2 become?

Umm, yes, hence why it is cheap and lazy. Using operant conditioning, you can take a game that isn't worth playing and play on human instinct to make them want to play it anyway.

Yep! Krazzar made the same ridiculous argument in another thread. Oh, but but but, if you didn't have an endless, soul-sucking, social life-robbing treadmill, then everyone would leave. What bloody nonsense. I agree with you, and like I said to him, this is nonsense because there are plenty of games out there with little or no progression at all. Pick a game with limited progression, like LittleBigPlanet, which is purely cosmetic unlocks.

People keep playing LBP and barely bother unlocking anything, and even those who have everything tend to keep coming back to it? Why? It's fun. It is FUN. Rule of Fun people, do you know it? If something is fun, you'll love it, you'll stick with, you'll do so because you're enjoying yourself and you're having a blast. You don't need something to pick at weak minded addictions in order to make you want to play, you'll play it because it's a genuinely great game.

Gear treadmills in GW2 do nothing more than prove that it isn't a genuinely great game. In fact, it proves that what I've been saying here over the past week or more is absolutely right. It's a tremendously dull game! And instead of addressing that with more fun and varied content, rather than the same old copy-pasted events, they've just added the treadmill.

Adding a treadmill is just like screaming 'THIS IS A SUBPAR GAME,' because a good game doesn't need it!

(Emphasis added to Rule of Fun, because people seriously need to click that link and understand what it says to them.)

All your honestly shocked by this ? I mean, you crafted the best weapon in the game and suddenly it's not the best ? There's something else above it ? It's kind of normal that Anet keep Legendaries on the same level as the best gear available.
The point is that Legendaries is never above the best tier.

But exotic weapons were the best in the game. Now (or rather, soon) it won't be the best anymore. Actually no, I'm not shocked, because this is the way it was in WoW all the time.

I'm just annoyed that they stick a "Guild Wars" label to this game.

Specialz, on 15 November 2012 - 08:29 PM, said:

There is a reason why stores have a return policy on items. If I go to the store try out and outfit and it isn't what I expect logic dictates, i put it down and try something else. Now in this case, you had 3-4 beta runs to try it out see if it not what you like and not get the game, most of the people here and tried to rationalize any issues by claiming it is only beta, but anybody that has been in the MMO game knows betas closed to release usually represent the final product even if everything says otherwise.

Actually, in YOUR specific case you have been complaining to my knowledge about the game since the beginning, which should have been a hint that maybe the game isn't going to be what you expected.

That doesn't actually change anything. It's still the case that the company didn't sell the product that it promised. Period. It didn't even sell that product to you, you also paid for a defect product. The difference is that you think that the game is fun anyway. However, for some reason, and this is where it gets strange, you want to defend it from any criticism whatsoever, in any way possible, including accusing people who merely remarks that the product is indeed defect as being mentally diseased.

I am not really here to justify my actions, if you think I am bias that's fine and you are right. I am usually bias against: people who are were too dumb to realized that a company will always market their product in the best possible light. i am also bias against people with unrealistic expectation, people that are so disillusioned over a video game, people that have video game version of Histrionic personality disorder that keep talking about how they are quitting in other to drum up sympathy, added people that totally ignore all the road signs that gw2 might not be the game for them and still decided to play and are mad about it, so I guess you are right.

Hahahahaha this post takes the cake. Definitely.

In any other industry it works like this. You buy a product where the maker has explicitly stated quality X. Like you can put diesel but not gasoline into this engine. And then you fill up with diesel and the engine breaks down. And then you sue that company for loads of millions because their product didn't fulfil the specifications. And everyone, even the company that you sued, agrees with you.

But in video games it works like this: You buy a product where the maker has explicitly stated quality X. Like no gear grind or account bound dyes or whatever. And then dyes are account bound and you need to grind for gear. And then you don't even sue the company, you just post a complaint on a discussion board. And then you get accused of being mentally ill.

Al Shamari, on 15 November 2012 - 07:52 PM, said:

Could you please provide a link to anything that says that the coming patch is going to introduce changes to Legendaries that are going to change their stats?

No, sorry. All I know is that legendaries will be bumped to be equal to ascendeds. That probably won't happen in this patch, but it will happen in a coming patch.

Of course, we can always hope for that the ascended weapons will have the same stats as an unmodded exotic, and have a slot (apart from the infusion slot). But how likely is that really?

Reposted from the R and D thread on Black Lion Chests since it wasn't 100% on topic so I brought it here.

This thread is to discuss the way that ANet has handled this installment of Halloween, most notably what they have done with Black Lion Chests. These are my thoughts.

So I had a bit of a flame battle in /map last night in LA over Halloween skins costing ridiculous amounts. Essentially the argument that: "If you don't want it, don't grind for it." is being used rampantly.

This is fundamentally wrong. Legendaries are a legitimate grind. This is HALLOWEEN. It is supposed to be a fun community oriented event. No one, save those people who do nothing but PvE and farm 8 hours a day can reliably afford these skins.

In case you missed it, what ANet did was inflate the economy so that gems trade for more gold. This combats gold sellers with a more competitive price from Dollars --> Gold but it makes the exchange for Gold --> Gems completely absurd. The problem with this is that it blew the economy up overnight. Any player who is not spending money on the game post-purchase is negatively impacted by this event because you can no longer buy gems with gold for any semblance of a reasonable amount.

If they really wanted these skins to be difficult to obtain, in a community event, mind you, they should have made it so you had to complete a certain amount of events or get "Halloween Tokens" which are awarded based on your participation in the actual event.

The real problem with them being in Black Lion Chests is that in 330 hours on my character, I have gotten 3 keys, ever. This is including the personal story. I've gotten one from a drop maybe one time. The amount of keys that you get in this game is probably a ratio of 1 key to 100 chests. The idea that not only are keys almost impossible to get in a drop, but because they are in the trading post, gem prices exploded because they make an insanely rare item put in a chest that is insanely hard to open. It's exponential, if you didn't realize.

These skins aren't account bound like EVERYTHING else you get from a chest. So people who are lucky enough to make it out of the flawed system, turn around and make the economy explode even more charging 40g for a skin driving 99% of the population who can't afford the skins to try and buy just enough gems to open a couple chests and pray that the astronomical odds work in their favor.

If anyone is going to argue that you can "Just roll a new character and get the key from the story quest." There is a serious problem. There should not be people having to grind outside of the Halloween event to get anything involved within the Halloween event. The ANet marketing team and their e-conomists seriously dropped the ball on this.

We, as a community, cannot let them think that this is ok. If the only argument that can be brought up is that if you want it, grind for it just like a legendary, or to take advantage of story quests by re-rolling characters in order to get keys that -never- drop otherwise, this is fundamentally wrong.

This is a community every reward/item should be available within the parameters of the event just like the legacy left by GW1's holiday events has established. I am incredibly disappointed by the way this marketing ploy was designed.

*This is a marketing issue, not a content issue, to be clear.I have thoroughly enjoyed the other content in this event. I have not tried to open chests and I do not plan on it. I also have not bought gems or bought a skin with in-game gold. This is outrage based on principle and what has happened to others. I have not been cheated in any way, but ANet needs to know that this is wrong.

EDIT: I have received a lot of hateful comments on account of my opinion. I have even received private messages from individuals (who obviously made fake accounts just to cuss me out [wow]) insulting me in any number of ways. I made this post to take a public stand against something ANet has done. I played the original Guild Wars and the debacle with the chests is just horrendous compared to the legacy GW1 has left.

Let everyone remember that this is a forum for shared ideas, not insults. If you are toxic to the conversation, you will be reported. Do not think that you are so pretentious that you are allowed to insult other posters. If you feel that you need to insult others, go play Xbox Live or League. I have a lot of respect for members of this community, but if individuals continue to insult, berate, and degrade, I will begin to feel sorry that I ever stood up for this community to begin with.

EDIT #2: ANet has provided a solution to the issue.

#275 is my response to the semantics behind the word chance and SEVERAL possible solutions that ANet could use in the future or could have used now. (substitute "Wintersday" where appropriate)

Thinking that Anet are full of people with the best intentions in the world and that Crystin Cox and NCsoft is responsible for every cash related decision is more than naive.

So wait a minute, Expecting a company that ran a game EXTREMELY well with a B2P Method for YEARS to make a good game which followed the same suit as the first is naive? And being skeptical that Nexon bought out shares of Arenanets parent company and installed their Cash Shop Manager, and believing that they may have had more than a subtle influence on the devlopers cash shop ideals is also naive? Well then, tickle me naive.

This is how someone else described it, I think it gets across how some of us feel about it.

"I feel its going to go downhill from here, with the chests, if they keep doing stuff like this. I don’t necessarily mind having to buy them from the gem store (in fact I would rather have that then them be in the chests). I have horrible luck, so I will/would be one of those that would spend $100 or more, and not get the kitten thing(s). They should just make them a separate item in the cash shop, like the costumes are going to be. RNG/gambling should never be the only way to get something."

All of these threads always seem to degenerate into the same thing: People who hate grinding, which is everybody, and people who tolerate grinding because they desperately need to be special flowers.

But in the end, we still all hate grinding, and to hell with the special flowers. I'd rather wear the same armor that half the game is wearing then look at a grind and have to budget 4 hours a day. Special flowers need to get over themselves.